Ah. New Year resolutions. We are all so familiar with them. It’s a promise that we make to ourselves to start doing something good or stop doing something bad on the first day of the year. However, it has already been almost three weeks since we’ve welcomed the new year and I am assuming most of us are floundering to keep up our resolutions. This is a struggle faced by most of us (if not all) and there are so many jokes making light of that fact.
“May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions.” (Joey Adams)
“It’s officially New Year’s Eve. You only have a couple of hours to do all the things you will resolve not to do in the new year.”
“Last year’s resolution was to lose 20 pounds by Christmas. Only 30 pounds to go.”
“To a New Year full of new possibilities, even though I’m sure we’ll just do the same old stuff anyway.”
“Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever.” (Mark Twain)
It’s an age old struggle. We try our best to better ourselves doing what we’ve always done. Einstein said it best : “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” However, when we fail, as we inevitably do, we end up feeling miserable about ourselves and tend to brand ourselves as failures. This in turn plays no small role in our mental health and emotional well-being. The devil uses these moments of weakness to hit us where it hurts.
Psalm 25:15 says this : “My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare.”
If there is a problem in your life that seems imposing, and you keep falling prey to it, do not try to conquer it through your own strength. Every time you fail, it will seem bigger and bigger until it feels insurmountable. Do not wait until you lose your joy and strength to turn to the Lord. The very moment you know that your feet are caught in a snare, immediately look up. This might be against our human logic but “the man who trusts in the Lord will never be ashamed”. It seems a bit ridiculous to us to look up when the snare has caught us down around our feet. But that is Biblical counsel : “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.. do not be wise in your own eyes.” (Proverbs 3:5,7)
The man who looks up for help will never be disappointed.
The Isrealites cried out to the Lord for deliverance from their bondage and the Lord became “concerned” about them (Exodus 2:25). He knew that they were facing an enemy bigger than themselves. When God’s people acknowledge Him in their trouble, He gets involved. We are familiar with what follows : the Lord fights on behalf of Israel and leads them on to a great deliverance from those that tried to keep them in bondage.
You and I do to have to live in bondage, dear friend. When we are faced with battles that threaten to squelch our spirit, let us look up to the One who hasn’t lost a battle yet. Exodus 12:39 says that when God delivered the Isrealites, it was so sudden that they did not even have time to prepare food for themselves for the long journey they were to undertake! It was that sudden and complete. Let me encourage you today to give your “resolutions” to God. Ask Him to give you supernatural strength to stay on the path that is righteous. “With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall… It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure.” (Psalm 18:29, 32
I often tell people that the biggest testimony I have is the way God transformed the relationship between my husband and I. Please read my testimony if you would like to know this part of my life a little deeper. In short, God began His plan by doing a thorough work work on my husband. My husband was so fed up of the stressed life that we were leading because neither of us was willing to die to our flesh. He decided that he was going to take the initiative and do something about it. However, it became increasingly apparent that this couldn’t be accomplished by mere human efforts. He became desperate for change and start to ask God to help him lead a life led by the Spirit.
The brutally practical plan that God gave Him was this: Be silent when you would rather speak and suffer when you would rather retaliate. Let your ego die and let Christ prevail in your heart. Let your gentleness be evident to your wife. To achieve this, pray fervently for help during your moment of crisis.
Years later, my husband told me what a difficult road that had been – what a painful path he had to adhere to. His prayers were frantic and desperate. However, the peace that began to reign externally was immediate. Internally, when he allowed Christ to rule his heart and root out anger and irritation, his stress turned to freedom. It became infectious. I wanted what he had. I began to see changes in my own life. Our marriage is a miracle.
If any of you know my husband, it would be very difficult for you to believe that he had anger issues. When we shared our testimony in our home group – everyone was incredulous. But that is the power of the Holy Spirit. He does such a thorough work on every area that is in submission to Him that the former man is unrecognisable. Don’t depend on your strength. You will certainly fail and you can never bring about the kind of change that Christ can. Many-a-time, we believe that God wants nothing to do with our physical needs and that he would have no interest in helping us overcome (or build) day-to-day habits that “aren’t holy enough”. We assume, wrongly, that He is only interested in our spiritual needs. The Bible itself shows us that isn’t the case at. We see in Numbers 11 that the people of Israel craved (wailed, to be more accurate) for some meat. They were tired of the manna they were being given every day and wanted something else.
When Moses takes this request to the Lord, the Lord agrees to feed the “six hundred thousand men” and their families with meat. At this, Moses himself is incredulous and expresses his skepticism. The Lord replies: “Is the Lord’s arm too short? Now you will see whether or not what I say will come true for you.”
And the Lord was true to his word.
Numbers 11:31 says, “Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to three feet deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction.”
If we read the entire passage, the story has a very sad ending because of the way the people grumbled against the Lord and Moses. However, my point is that God can make even physical needs come true in you life. If he can feed the entire nation of Israel with quail when they were living in the middle of a desert, he can help you wake up early, to lose weight, to develop a taste for healthy food, to exercise, to develop a discipline in any area and anything else you might need for your life. If there is one thing we need to give up this year (and every year after), let us give up the practice of doing things with our own strength and instead, rely on the strength of God and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us.
Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD. (Psalm 31:24)